Comic for Monday, November 15th, 2021
So this is sort of an abrupt transition to the next day and chapter, as I didn’t do an interlude or intermission, but decided to not sidetrack on the pacing even more than I already I do, there’s a nearly indefinite number of characters we could follow with those, and most of that could have been covered will be self evident in time (like who the special guest is… it is technically a character that’s been seen before, but not one that has been particularly introduced, so guessing wouldn’t be that productive… though I imagine some people might).
Arkady volunteered help fight in the in the conflict on the border, as we may recall, but pretty much immediately got wounded is now on leave to recover. While he more or less seems recovered, he’s still not quite, but I suspect that other factors may be involved as well, given he went there and immediately almost got killed. While he’s fairly talented as a mage, he’s technically a student, a fairly important person, and not an especially skilled commander or combatant.
As it’s been awhile, the green haired girl is Lisa, and is one of Naomi and Arkady’s friend. She appeared last time they went shopping, and a few times since. Mione isn’t here as like Arkady she is helping the military, as she has actually useful skills, but unlike him she didn’t immediately get sent back to a hospital. We may catch up with her eventually, she’s trying been trying to get assigned to help Tyler, particularly since the thing with Marc, but no one was quite sure how long he’d be out during that.
Pretty sure Naomi still thinks that napping is how you recover hit points, but while Artem and Arkady aren’t quite in the same league, they do seem to heal somewhat faster than one might expect.
We are going to split back and forth for awhile here in this chapter probably, as it runs a few things in parallel.
If Peter’s hair looks weird, it’s because it’s supposed to be wet. It’ll go back to being more like his hair normally is at some point.
Loading ...
Is it confirmed that Kally can summon red constructs other than Fluffy? It has been stated that Kally has such an absurdly overdetailed construct that she has limited or sealed off some of her potential to maintain it. Given her demonstrated high abilities in other magic areas, it seems possible that part of the potential that was lost was the ability to summon other sorts of red constructs.
I think we might have seen her use some sort of blue construct in the tennis battle with Naomi though.
Kally’s blue construct confirmed: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-wednesday-february-10th/
… and again: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-friday-feburaury-19th/
Might be the key provides a cap, but “how deeply it is written” appears to be something variable, at least, even for a given key. Possibly even entirely under the control of the caster, up to their cap.
I do not think we have seen Kally “summon” anything red other than Fluffy. But I think the logic is wrong: Kally is an extremely talented mage. Fluffy is by far the most familiar red construct she can summon. Fluffy trumps nearly EVERYTHING else.
For example, right at the start of the comic, when the drop tanks arrive at Levenworth and Kally attempts to communicate with the tank operator… when fired upon, her immediate response is to protect herself (with the ground), then to distract the tank (throw the ground at it), then summon Fluffy. Fluffy trumps tank… well until another tank gets involved.
I think the question you should be asking, if Kally needed to summon a red construct, WHY would she summon anything else? Remember, finesse is NOT one of Kally’s strong points (nor is it her style).
I note that Eliana can also summon a red dragon… but needs help with the mana requirement. BUT she can also summon a red barrier, a forest spirit for house defense, and a hound of the hunt. Honestly I think it’s more Kally is more use to being a weapon (thus dragon is default setting) rather than Eliana’s experience of house shenanigans (she picks the “spirit” that fits the bill).
Having her bring an umbrella means she would not have to advertise that her magic is class Red by using it to block rain. This would attract lots of attention from anyone concerned with security type matters.
Blue mages would be fairly common and (by comparison) low power. Greens would be noticed and (locally) be assumed to be Family mages, possibly of high rank. Yellows and up would be the magic equivalent of major nobility.
Casually using red to block the rain would be like driving a tank to the store to get bread.
Interesting question: Is it possible to cast a lower color to hide your power? I suspect it could be done but it would be difficult because the color is likely tied to the strength of your Eidos Key. Red casters and demons being special cases usually.
Hey folks; I hate to do this, but going to delay the comic this week. I thought I’d have time today to finish it, but I’m at the closing stretch of another long term project (…which is running fairly late itself) and want to get that finished.
Yeah, I get that. No problem. We’re easy going.
But help me out a little. Should I dial the page refreshes back to every 15 minutes? Every 30? Once an hour?
And while I’m at it I think we should discuss the amazing campaign that Miss Holmgren has been running for Santa Hat! Not only is she amazing, but given the corollaries between Central and Earth, it seems reasonable that she might know what the Santa Hat means!
Hey, yeah! That’s awesome! When can we start voting for Miss Holmgren?
Okay folks, back off with the torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers. You are making Past nervous. He’s having a hard time concentrating and keeps looking out the window! LOL
He should take a break from his “project” and come out and join us! We have extra torches and pitchforks
“It’s going to rain” metaphor after another spur-of-the-moment, somewhat disappointing attempt by someone to seize an advantage (last one was Kally’s trip to destroy some rainclouds). It seems that all cards must stay on the table to keep this a near competition.
Ok, I’m slow. I didn’t notice at first, but now I have. I’d think Naomi would have had time to fix her hair and get some alternate clothes by now. Just saying.
Is she trying to get in trouble for her hair?
“Get some alternative clothes” is what they are meeting to do.
… and I don’t expect she’ll fix her hair until Mium’s plans once more require a specific hair colour …
Sigh. I should check my database more frequently or something.
I’d kinda enjoy seeing someone trying to get Naomi in trouble over her hair. Given that its either running into a Mium planned legal brick, and/or involve physically taking her down. Both of which are tall orders.
I am more surprised Mium didn’t give her a card with her current hair colour and truly scary instructions on it – not unlike the one they used when accessing that datacenter.
It’s not like mym to forget, but it is entirely like Naomi to not bother to pick it up because she didn’t think she would need it.
I’d bet he did, sometime before chapter 12 page 9. But I doubt that she wants to be a scary IDS official with a questionable grasp of Malsan when she has a speaking part. Ok, sure, “questionable” does leave room for the answer of “amazingly native”, but it’s still probably an association she doesn’t want right now.
I get curious about what might be special about Peter’s jacket that he unwilling to share it should precipitation occur.
Or if he is pre-emptively declining an opportunity to be chivalrous for some other reason.
I choose door number two. Perhaps Peter just wants to make sure she brings a jacket. Maybe she has been “forgetful” previously just so she can be assured Peter cares for her.
I believe there was an instance of using Fluffy as an umbrella, though I’m not going to do the archive delve to find it right now.
It’s been mentioned (chapter 9, page 14), but I don’t think it was depicted. That said, I don’t have a comprehensive listing of all of the Patreon files and I don’t have a list of any of the Top Web Comics files.
Peter said it, but Kally was present, he used it to win an argument, and she let him, so it seems like it was probably at least somewhat accurate. Dragon was not specifically named, but it was some tactical class destructive magic that she has at her disposal that could potentially be used as an umbrella, and the list of those that we’re aware of is pretty short.
He also told Oriah what’s-his-name “my umbrella is here” when meeting Kally in the rain after presenting him with that heavy info dump.
Makes me wonder why Kally would need to grab an umbrella, mind …
Just because she could make a magic one, it probably makes more sense to carry one. It is fairly conspicuous to walk around with a giant magic shield keeping off the rain. Last time they were doing that was at Levenworth where that’s probably more normal, but I imagine that gets some weird looks just walking around.
Plus if she has an umbrella, she can have her dragon stomp things and not get wet at the same time.
This is Malsa. It’s probably a status symbol to walk around with just that sort of umbrella.
I noticed on the “my umbrella is here” page, zooming in, someone in the Peter’s umbrella party had made basically the same kind of umbrella.
I’d guess that there’s probably a commercially available autocaster program that would make an umbrella almost but not quite like that one, such that people could tell the difference, but at least some people it’s still kind of statusy. Just like the obnoxiously bright headlights with the slight blue cast to their light and the myriad mostly illegal after-market heavy blue tints people use to reduce their headlight illumination to below the legally required brightness (hence the “mostly illegal” designation).
Peter does not seem like the chivalrous type.
Ir might seem that way but Peter is a good man who cares about ALL good people regardless of nationality or origin. He is chivalrous on a much larger scale than mere mortals like us.
I feel it’s more correct to say he’s a false misanthrope. I mean, it’s debatable about whether he *actually* dislikes people, but he certainly claims to dislike them a lot while dedicating his life to help those who have not earned his ire by using their positions of power to get away with breaking the law.
I am somewhat curious about how he feels about those who use their positions of power to craft the law to allow themselves to do what they want at the expense of other people. But I get the feeling that he’s not really going to weigh in too heavily on that particular point while there’s so many of the former set to target. I mean, it’s a lot easier to sort through your moral outrage without admitting that you like people when somebody else has decided the people you’re after are bad.
I don’t think it’s fair to call someone a “false misanthrope” just because they help people despite complaining about doing so. I can assure you it’s possible to dislike people despite being willing to help them out when they need it time and time again.
Of course, I’ll admit you’re probably correct about that not being what’s going on here.
“I can assure you it’s possible to dislike people despite being willing to help them out when they need it time and time again.”
I might argue that this is a very common sentiment among those who are called upon to lend aid to there fellow humans regularly. Talk to first responders, IT staff, and educators about how they feel regarding their charges.
Often, from their point of view, humans are constantly getting themselves into a bind by engaging in behaviors that are likely to cause them grief. And then those individuals express surprise that the behavior led to a problem.
But I always put my homework off until Sunday night, it was never a problem before, said most high school students at some point.
But I never bother with updating my virus protection, said every single human calling Geek Squad over a virus infected machine.
But I always pass on that hill, said the very small number of survivors.
And the teacher (usually) gives the student another day or two, and the IT staff does another needless OS install, and the EMT sheds a tear while filling another body bag.
I don’t believe you. I’m certain at least one person calling Geek Squad over a virus infected machine said, “Antivirus? What’s that?” Several people must have said, “Anti-virus software? That’s such a scam!”
And then there’s that one guy that said, “Oh, my company installed anti-virus software on this system when they imaged it, but I disabled it because it slowed down my system so much. I’m taking it to you for support because they said they’d fire me if they caught me doing this again.”
My feeling is that “false misanthrope” would fit Miko better. She openly professes to dislike people, but still helped the hacker girl out.
Peter doesn’t really seem to dislike people. He seems more… people ambivalent, most of the time. He doesn’t seem to quite get why he would be friends with people, but he generally seems to put up with them. He seems to be at least somewhat fond of Kally and Miko, and at worst seems occasionally exasperated by Tyler, Amy, Naomi, and others.
I would generally call him more of an introvert than a misanthrope.
I’m not convinced that “false” misanthrope applies to Miko. I get the distinct impression that Miko assisted the hacker only to avoid disproval from Peter, one of the very few people whom she does like.
I don’t think she did it for Mium, though possibly there is some sentiment against setting bad examples for Mium.
Peter is merely *claiming* that he wouldn’t, in part due to wanting to encourage her to bring her own, and in part because he doesn’t know how to correctly say his real feelings and have them be accepted. If put in the actual situation, he would let her use the jacket without a moment’s hesitation, and would even suggest it if she didn’t seem interested.
I really enjoy how the split page is able to give context. Kally says she will go with Peter because she has nothing better to do, but the split page makes that an obvious lie: she had plans, she cancelled them in order to have no plans, so she would not have “anything better” to do than go with Peter.
For his part, Peter rarely travels alone, and yet clearly made plans go do dangerous things despite not bringing Naomi or Mium with it, almost as if he planned to have Kally with him.
They both planned this, and neither is going to admit it.
Back when the woman of my dreams was someone in my life, the only things I ever had to do that was more important than spending time with her was figuring out what to say to her (still haven’t really managed that) and not annoying her by spending too much time around her/following her around when she didn’t want me to. (I may have done this one a bit too much. Reading her tolerance for my presence wasn’t something I ever had training in and I tended to err on the side of caution. That was probably a mistake, though consistently erroring the other way would’ve also been an issue.)
I feel like Peter’s priorities are somewhere similar, though he’d probably also prefer if the world doesn’t go to pieces around her. I mean, I had the same preference, but less likelihood of it happening, and less ability to do something about it if it did.
Good to see Lisa again. We haven’t seen her since the beginning of chapter nine, one page after Naomi decided she could take off her sling since she’d slept and then even spent a bit more time not doing too much strenuous.
I used to have that look in pictures a lot when I was a kid. Up until I was about 15-19, severely wetting my hair seemed to be the only way to get my hair to not seem to be trying to escape. (At around 15 or so, some of my hair started to learn how. By 19, the amount that had learned how was substantial.)
As far as the cereal goes, the really incriminating evidence would have been if Kally had thought to discuss with Ila the concept of “stale” and in particular how it applies to cereal, and asked if the cereal she’d taken to eating when she moved in was stale.
“Um, I didn’t actually finish all of that cereal yet. It’s all been about like this. That box you’re eating from? It was here before I got here.”
At that point, she’d know that Peter wasn’t just absent-mindedly buying the stuff, but actually deliberately rotating out the old stock.
Edit: I’ve double-checked the expiration dates on my cereal, and it depends a lot on what Tasty-Os is made of. If it has something like honey in it, then yes, this. Most other sweeteners, not as much. While I have been having a rough time with my cereal deciding to brick on me, a lot of that has to do with me liking certain cereals that use honey as a binder. Cereal actually going for real stale takes a lot longer than I believe it’s been since Peter and Kally were on cohabiting terms previously.
I think Peter’s houses blow up fast enough he doesn’t have to worry about the expiration date of cereal. On the hand, it does mean he keeps buying it to stock each house with it.
Ah, right. I keep forgetting that something named Tasty Os is probably not going to be as durable as Grape Nuts.
Dunno, Tgape. I sat a cafeteria cinnamon roll on a shelf in my sophomore year of college. It sat there the whole year. We did not eat it at the end of the year, but to all senses other than taste it appeared to remain unchanged over the course of 8 months.
Then again, the cafeteria did not bill it as “Tasty Buns”. Probably not. I don’t actually recall how they were labeled.
8 months, impressive.
Of more relevance though: How many explosions?
While it was a long time ago, I do not recall there being any explosions.
This is maybe not so irrelevant as it might at first appear. This took place in the early 90s, when calling in bomb threats was a popular way to avoid tests, and apparently boredom.
So I don’t recall anything exploding, but I’m aware that several of the local high schools did have bomb threats.
Bwhahahahaha! The look on Peter’s face in panel 6 is priceless.
“Crispies, I’ve been caught out …can I misdirect? …create a distraction? …surely it is about time this building blew up? …… No? Aw, dang it…”
My guess: The lady who talked to Mium; and when he jumped off the building, she followed him. That one.
Completely nonproductive, just like good English, but with a high potential of being answered relatively quickly. I would wager within one week, barring ills.
My guess is that it’s Naomi’s sister.
That was my first thought when I saw the tone with which unknown speaker addressed Naomi (which I took to me “excited”); this guess was strengthened by Past’s comments that we had “technically” seen said character before.
IDK why she would be there, but… I stand by my guess.
If the off-panel speaker is the special guest, then I’d agree. Um, at least those of us on Patreon. I can’t remember if Miss Atarah Jr. has been on the main comic site. I at least don’t have a database entry for her. That said, there’s still about half a bajillion unnamed characters that I’ve not properly entered yet also, so she could be one of those.
Yes, I know that’s not how Jr. works.
@Old Dan: I don’t think Maia would be so excited to see Naomi. Also, we’ve been introduced to Maia before. (chapter 2, page 14. She was first seen the page before, but no introductions.)
Last page of Ch. 15, there’s a girl that was deduced [by Amaranth, I believe, but the spoiler tags in the comments on that page aren’t working for me, so I can’t check] to be her sister.
Although I don’t think that’s technically officially confirmed.
I think the sister is a good guess, particularly because Past says the scene would have set it up was skipped.
There was an implication we would see Naomi’s sister last chapter (from the last page of the chapter before which set up a bunch of scenes), but we never did.
Thanks folks. Reminding me of the archives cost me hours.
I believe that this, very frequently referenced, page from chapter 10 is the beginning of the logic chain where Mium discovered he could relabel certain entities as something other than a normal human. Such as a Kardus.
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-september-14th/
Of course now I’m once again wondering how much distance separates a Kardus from a human and from a demon.
I think it should be noted that Mium tried that, but it did not entirely work. He still was not able to directly kill Kardus without a better reason. In the end, he technically left it up to Ila.
It is interesting that he tried to kill Kardus that way though.
My understanding is that Kardus and Rovak are humans, unlike Atter. Kardus could not instantly regenerate like Rovak, and Rovak’s regeneration seems to be tied to a special power others have referred into in-comic (the I Code; probably Immortality Code).
Atter on the other hand when he is damaged, his red construct nature starts to show through, rather than instantly regenerating.
Peter and Mium did reference Mium killing Atter being a “drastic action”, but I suspect that has less to do with morality and more with the level of firepower Mium would have needed to bring to bear to completely destroy a tethered demon (a feat that even Nathan Summers is struggling with it seems).
Mium may have tried to kill Rovak during their fight, but at the time Rovak was directly attacking him, and survived his arm being removed without missing a beat, so that seems fairly justified under self defense even if Mium intended it to be a fatal blow rather than a warning (especially as Mium had tried to negotiate a truce earlier).
The issue with killing Kardus seemed to be that he had surrendered, and that seems to set a flag on Mium that he can no longer kill a person, as that would fall into his prohibition on killing people to future proof his plans. As Mium demonstrated though, he is not compelled to keep them alive in the face of imminent Ila though, and may even subtly encourage it as long as he does not directly act.
Those two (Pater and Kally) dance more than Astaire and Rogers when it comes to their feelings about each other! Such a classical motif.
I just enjoy the Peter level of certainty on the weather. Its going to rain, no if, ands or butts. Which either means he has access to much high weather tech than we do (up to and including some form of prescience), or he has reasonable certainty that there is going to be a mage battle that brings atypical weather.
Of course there’s going to be a mage battle. If there wasn’t going to be a mage battle, Kally would have no need of Peter’s jacket. She’d just whip out her tactical flying umbrella. Obviously, her normal umbrella’s going to be otherwise engaged.
Well of course there’s going to be a mage battle. We haven’t had one yet this chapter!
Also, I would be a little surprised if Peter couldn’t at least occasionally choose the weather. Strategic grade Intel, and hailing from a society that controls its environment tightly..
“… the hundredth time, you wonder if he can control the weather itself.”
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-tuesday-may-28th-2019/
This looks like an instance where he dropped the ball on the weather.
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-may-26th/